#3 Maggie
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| Maggie look-alike |
I met
Maggie when we were both teaching in the same high school. She was in English and
I was in music. We became friends of sort. Our relationship constantly vacillated
between hot and cold. And
The biggest difference between the two of us was that I was
a workaholic and she was pretty lazy. And we definitely had different body
clocks—a real problem when we traveled together. I’d be up at dawn, raring to
go, and she’d still be sleeping at lunchtime.
We’d both hated having to kowtow to the administration in
our high schools when we were teachers. Maggie had always been the first one on
the picket line whenever we went on strike. I’d belonged to the union too, but hadn’t
been nearly as involved or vocal as she was.
Despite all our traveling together, the friendship was never
really satisfying for me. Why did I stay in it? Two of the major reasons were
that we were both single and able to get away any time we wanted, so I always
had a traveling buddy, and for the most part we liked to do the same things.
But Maggie was never emotionally supportive of me, and our personalities were
so different. In a way, we were like night and day.
We were both sensitive, but unlike Maggie, I wore my heart
on my sleeve, and liked to analyze and talk about feelings, behavior, and
relationships. I was pretty uninhibited and somewhat impulsive, while she was a
little uptight, and concerned more with appearances. She had trouble expressing
emotions and feelings and kept everything inside—the opposite of me.
She was also always late, whereas I was always on time; she
forgot birthdays, which I never did; and she rarely, if ever, did anything
special for anyone—and if she did it was as an afterthought. While I would try
to think of things to give her that I knew she would like, she would give me a T-shirt
she’d gotten in return for donating to a festival or something. It wouldn’t
even be the right size.
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